US Aims for Fastest Supercomputer Title

Currently, Japan holds the fastest-supercomputer title with its Earth Simulator, which has 40-teraflop capability. Thomas Zacharia, ORNL associate laboratory director for Computing and Computational Sciences, told the E-Commerce Times that having faster supercomputing power in the United States will be a boon for the country.

By Elizabeth Millard
May 13, 2004 2:27 PM PT

The United States has set its sights on becoming the country with the
fastest supercomputer. The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National
Laboratory (ORNL) announced it has been chosen to lead a partnership
with the goal of building the most powerful supercomputer by 2007.
The Department of Energy awarded the lab a US$25 million contract
for the effort.

Development will be done by combining partnerships, researchers, new
buildings and equipment. The blend of these different components is
referred to as the National Leadership Computing Facility (NLCF). The
five-year plan will pool computational resources for a sustained capacity of
50 teraflops (50 trillion calculations per second), with a peak capacity of
more than 250 teraflops.

ORNL expects to reach the 45-teraflop mark by late this year or early
2005, according to Thomas Zacharia, ORNL associate laboratory director for
Computing and Computational Sciences. He told the E-Commerce Times that the
plan also includes hitting the 100-teraflop level in 2006.

Need for Speed

The push to craft a faster supercomputer is not simply rooted in
a desire to find out how much computing power can be created, Zacharia
said. Rather, speedier technology will aid in science and technology
to such a degree that it will actually change how science is done.

"It's not just a big computer that will come out of this," he said. "It's
the creation of a new national scientific fabric."

He noted that there are already fundamental changes in how sciences like
nanotechnology and biotechnology are approached because of computing power. With
even more supercomputing speed, Zacharia predicted, there will be breakthrough
discoveries in climate forecasting, biology and fusion energy, among other
fields.

"We will be able to investigate matter in a new way," he said. "It will
allow us to understand the world we live in on a fundamental level."

Strong Partners

The NLCF has signed up more than 20 partners for its supercomputing effort,
including Argonne National Laboratory, which will develop the software that
will run the supercomputer.

Argonne will install a 5-teraflop IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer that will be
built at the lab's facilities. Rick Stevens, director of Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division, said in an interview with the E-Commerce Times that the machine is scalable enough that the lab and IBM expect to be able to expand it to 40 teraflops.

"This project will set the direction of Argonne's high-performance
computing research through the end of the decade," he said. "The BlueGene
will allow us to explore a wide range of applications and promising
technologies."

The NLCF also will increase the capacity of its current Cray X1 computer to 20
teraflops this year and will add a 20-teraflop Cray Red Storm in 2005.

America the Super

Currently, Japan holds the fastest-supercomputer title with its Earth
Simulator, which has 40-teraflop capability. Zacharia noted that having
faster supercomputing power in the United States not only will aid global
scientific efforts, but also will be a boon for the country.

"As a nation, we have to innovate faster than the rest of the world," he
said. "Clearly, this technology will have an impact for all nations, but
it's in our best interest to have it here for economic competitiveness and
faster innovation."

Aberdeen Group analyst Peter Kastner told the E-Commerce Times that such a
supercomputer also would be handy for military applications, as it would
eliminate the need for real-world testing.

Beyond Science

Zacharia added that beyond scientific applications, such a powerful
supercomputer also could be used for corporate strategies. For example, an
automaker spends about US$2 billion to design a car and bring it to market.
Using a supercomputer, design and production time could be reduced,
lowering costs significantly. He maintains that this, in turn,
would have a powerful effect on the nation's economy.

"It allows the country to expand its leadership position in the world and
maintain it," he said.

Kastner added that the ORNL's goal is a realistic one that likely will
succeed. "Even in the last five years, the low costs of microprocessors and
the increasingly easy ability to scale computers has allowed the production
of computers that were unforeseeable even 10 years ago," he said. "So, like
a lot of things, as long as they've got the money, it's possible to develop
the technology."